2006 Campus Technology Innovators: ePortfolios

MnSCU’s WASKO: Building a unique ePortfolio
infrastructure to serve all Minnesota residents
and students—even at competing universities.

Challenge Met

The Minnesota State Colleges and Universities
system recognized that electronic portfolios
were becoming a critical component for
learner support and assessment, and set out
to create an ePortfolio infrastructure to serve
MnSCU faculty, staff, alumni, and students.

The effort, called “eFolio Minnesota” quickly grew beyond the higher
ed community, expanding to provide services
for all students (K-20) and residents
statewide. To date, more than 50,000 registered users have participated in the eFolio
system. Says Paul Wasko, director of eFolioMN,
“To our knowledge, we were the first,
and still one of the only, statewide ePortfolio
infrastructure available in North America.” He
notes that eFolioMN has achieved significant
impact with initial implementation resources
of less than half a million dollars. Some of the
project’s accomplishments:

Support of Minnesota students and residents
at no cost to the indiviual user, promoting
lifewide and lifelong learning

Deployment of web-based multimedia
tools that support the needs of the individual
learner—placing power in the
hands of the individual

Adoption of eFolioMN by other colleges
and universities—even those that compete
with MnSCU

How They Did It

From the start, says Wasko, the project’s goal
was to potentially serve all Minnesota residents
and students. “We selected workgroup
members from a number of public and private
organizations, reflecting the needs of the various
constituencies,” he notes. “Everyone
involved with eFolioMN subscribed to the
principle that the need of the individual learner
would drive the ultimate project design.”

The selection of technology architecture for
the project was driven by a request for proposals
(RFP) process, defining critical project
assumptions along with key deliverables.
Says Wasko, “At the time of the RFP, functionality,
scalability, and ease of use were critical
components, since portfolio standards had
not yet been developed nationally or internationally.”
The eFolioMN team settled on a
solution from Avenet.
Avenet’s eFolio system provided a flexible
platform for building a broad range of portfolios
well-suited to MnSCU’s focus on the
needs of the individual user.

Next Steps

Building on the success of individual portfolios
within the eFolioMN project, MnSCU is
expanding into the development of institutional
ePortfolios to meet the accreditation
needs of institutions. While both individual
and institutional portfolios serve as an online
showcase of work toward particular goals
and competencies, institutional portfolios
typically need to comply with more stringent
reporting rules set by an accrediting body.
Institutional portfolios can require higher levels
of security, bandwidth, data backups, and
feedback; and often, administration of content
is handled by multiple people, requiring
varying levels of access. To meet all of these
challenges and better adapt the ePortfolio
technology for institutional use, eFolioMN is
implementing additional software functionality,
such as improved feedback tools and view
settings that are customizable by type of
viewer (e.g., views for accrediting organizations
vs. the general public).

eFolio Minnesota is also exploring a new
business model with Avenet, intended to
make the technology more accessible and
affordable to colleagues outside of the state.
The goal: to create an eFolio consortium with
other campuses/systems from across the US,
to continually bring the latest in eFolio technology
to higher education. The consortium
will be a user-driven co-op model, rather than
a proprietary vendor model, meaning savings
and more input for member institutions.

Advice

“Define your project and key assumptions,”
advises Wasko. “Recruit a solid project team
and set of sponsors. Pick your development
partners carefully. Be willing to personally own
the problems—and share the successes.”